


A Witch, a Demon Hunter, and a Semi-Immortal Walk Into a Bar

by raindrop13



Category: Constantine (TV)
Genre: Based on the TV show not the comic books, F/M, First Person, Maybe OOC, cursing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 15:18:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13860453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raindrop13/pseuds/raindrop13
Summary: This was not the first time John had showed up at my doorstep unannounced, or even the first visit that technically qualified as breaking and entering.





	A Witch, a Demon Hunter, and a Semi-Immortal Walk Into a Bar

              I could feel the energy shifting. It woke me from a dead sleep. Even with all the spells and charms littered across my doorstep and windows, something dark had entered my home, and I didn’t like it.

              It didn’t feel _deadly_ , I decided. Not quite violent. It felt, more than anything, wounded – like an animal in a trap that will snarl and bite, not out of vindictiveness or cruelty, but out of fear.

              Reluctantly, I pushed off the warmth of the covers and tiptoed across the worn oak floors, shivering against the cool of the drafty house in my threadbare tank top and shorts. Flicking on a lamp, and then the hall light, I padded towards the front door, where the energy seemed to be shifting the most, where the protections spells were blinking and dancing trying to keep everything good in and everything bad out.

              John Constantine sat slumped against the door, smirking cheekily despite the blood and dirt coating nearly every inch of him. “Hello, luv. Give us a hand?”

              Sighing with a blend of irritation and relief, I bent to get a better look at him. Cuts and bruises adorned his face, and his lip was split and swelling. More importantly, a gash along his abdomen was bleeding. I pulled the knot of his tie loose, dropping it by the coat rack, and pushed his coat off his shoulders as I lifted him to his feet. “What on Earth got you into this kind of shape?”

              John shrugged, winced, and shook his head. “Oh, you know, the usual. Things that go bump in the night.” I pulled his white Oxford out from his pants and began unbuttoning to get a better look at the wound. “Didn’t realize it was that kind of visit.”

              Rolling my eyes, I was a little less than gentle in turning him towards the light – the cut was shallow, but, given how filthy he was, it was probably on its way to infected.

              “C’mon, Casanova, we need to get you cleaned up.”

              He followed me obediently to my bathroom, watching as I started the shower, pulled a fresh towel out, pointed him toward the soap. “I’ll bring you some clean clothes, just get the dirt off. When you’re clean I’ll stitch you up.”

              “Not going to give me any company?” he asked, shrugging out of his shirt with noticeable effort – I made a mental note to also grab some salves for the bruising.

              “Call if you need anything.” This was not the first time John had showed up at my doorstep unannounced, or even the first visit that technically qualified as breaking and entering. I didn’t mind, even if it was well past traditional visiting hours. Occasionally I even tagged along on local jobs, offering the kind of psychic touch that escaped John and Chas, or a bit of spellcasting that required a higher level of expertise. Or, rather, occasionally I used to. That had happened less and less, lately, now that they had a much more talented psychic. For a while there, I’d heard from John at least once a week – even if there wasn’t a job, he’d find some pretense to give me a ring. But now, I thought with a hint of ruefulness, pulling the powders and potions from the shelf, I had outlived my usefulness, at least as far as visits to the millhouse were concerned.

Pulling on a sweater to protect against the chill, I drew my hair up out of my eyes just as John appeared in the doorway, wearing the sweatpants I’d set out for him but not the T-shirt, holding the towel to his stomach to staunch the bleeding. I motioned him to the kitchen table, spread with medicine and magic. He hauled himself up with a groan, laying back on his elbows, as I turned on the overhead light. “You must be in really dire straits, to stoop to visiting me.” I kept my voice light as I dabbed the cut with alcohol, ignoring John’s hiss at the stinging.

              “What’s that supposed to mean, luv?”

              “I haven’t heard from you in a while. You have Zed now.”

              He groaned again and laid back fully against the table. “Maybe it’s the blood loss, darling, but you’re not making a lot of sense.”

              I spread an anesthetic salve across the wound, pleased when he made a noise of relief, and began stitching it closed. “Zed is a much better psychic than I am,” I continued patiently, focusing on keeping the stitches tight and even, “so you haven’t needed me lately.”

              John pulled himself half-up on his elbows again, and when I raised my eyes from my careful stitching his face was searching mine. “I never called you because I _needed_ you, Andromeda.”

              I grimaced, dropping my eyes back to the wound. “Don’t call me that, Constantine.”

              “Andi.” Sighing, I looked back up at him. “I called you because I like having you around.”

              “Jesus, you weren’t kidding about the blood loss.” John scoffed with frustration and tossed himself back on the table with a carelessness unbefitting his condition. “Be careful, you’re going to rip these stitches out before they’re even all the way in.”

              He didn’t respond. An anxiety came creeping in, as I sewed him up, that I had ruined something valuable – that the balance between us had been more delicate than I’d realized, and I’d shattered it. I laid the gauze over him, taped it down, and rose to look at his face, still covered in jagged nicks and bruises.

My strategy, as always, was the hope that if I focused on helping him – on whatever task was right in front of me, be it stitches or spells – I could ignore the pit of _want_ that had settled in my stomach the very first time I’d met John and had cruelly refused to leave. Because wanting John did no good. He was a ship in the night, and even when things had been really, really okay – when he’d called me once a week, when I’d been a regular fixture at the millhouse – I had never let myself believe that I could ever be anything more to him than a friend. John didn’t do more-than-friends; John did one-night-stands.

He watched as I soaked more cotton in alcohol, diving away from my fingers when I brought it to his face. “John, you’re covered in cuts. They need to be sterilized.”

              “It bloody burns.”

              I rolled my eyes and laughed despite myself. “You can walk into a den of demons no problem, but a little stinging and you tap out. C’mon,” I said, climbing to sit next to him on the table, anchoring him with my leg, “We don’t want to damage your pretty face.” He held still, but not quiet, cursing below his breath the entire time. As I brought it to the split on his lip, his hand gripped my thigh just above my knee, squeezing not quite tight enough to bruise. “Almost done.” I soaked another cotton pad in a healing serum, smiling as the magic cohered. “Now the good part.”

              My magic wasn’t strong enough to fix the long gash across his stomach, but the tiny cuts along his face seemed to dissolve beneath it. Even the split lip mostly sorted itself out, the swelling dissipating. He sighed with relief, resting his forehead on my shoulder, and I realized all at once that his hand was still on my thigh, that I could feel his breath on my neck, that he smelled so much of John, and magic, and my shampoo.

              Clearing my throat, I tried to pull away, reaching for the last jar. “This will help with the bruising, and the soreness.”

              “Andi.” His voice was a whisper, his breath still hot on my neck, his grip still tight on my thigh.

              “John, c’mon. One last potion is all you need, and then it's time for bed.”

              “Andi.” His voice was more insistent now, and his hand spread across my thigh to my hip, pulling me into him. “Fuck the potion. You know what I need. Bed sounds pretty good, though.”

              “John,” my voice broke, and I hated myself for it, hated how he pulled away to look me in the eye, hated the concern on his face, hated the helplessness of all of it. “John, you just want me because I’m here. And doing this, doing this just because I’m convenient, that would kill me.”

              John’s face was etched with concern and confusion – and, for some reason, absolute outrage – but the anxiety that had set in earlier was taking hold in my chest and it was getting difficult to breath. “John, I think you should go, I’m sorry, I don’t –”

              “You think you’re _convenient_?” The anger in his voice shocked me out of the downward spiral of my train of thought, and I stilled, watching like a deer in headlights. “You think it was _convenient_ to drive down here, half an hour out of the way, bleeding like a stuck pig? Or to find a reason to call you once a goddamn week and drag you down to the millhouse? You think it was bloody _convenient_ to love you all this fucking time and know this is how it would end? Don’t talk to me about _convenient_ , princess, nothing about the last two years of my life has been convenient, not since you came in and buggered it all up.”

              John’s anger was more operable than my fear, and before I knew it he’d swung off the table away from me, was striding towards the bathroom, still shirtless and bruised.

              “John, wait.” He ignored me, grabbing his filthy clothes off the bathroom floor. I stood in the doorway, blocking his exit, knowing he could push past me if he wanted. Instead, he stood in front of me, looking far more tired than he had when he’d gotten here. “John,” I whispered, “wait.” My breathing was headed towards hyperventilating and my hands were shaking where they clutched the door jamb on either side of me. “You’re saying… you’re saying you want me. _Me,_ not a – not a one-night stand. You want me, for real.”

              John huffed, glaring at the ceiling. “For real –  Jesus fucking Christ, bloody fucking hell.” And then, throwing his clothes back on the floor, his mouth was on mine, and his hands were on my waist, pushing me back against the wall, and my hands were ripping themselves from the door to grip his shoulders, my body responding to two years’ worth of pent up frustration before my mind could entirely work out what was happening. “Yes, Andi, I want you for real,” he growled against my teeth, “I should have thought that would be clear.”

              I huffed in frustration, pressing my hands to his chest. “What part of you shagging every breathing woman in a fifty-mile radius was supposed to indicate you were interested in me?”

              He laughed almost frenziedly, ignoring the question. “Did you just say _shagging_?”

              “That’s what you always call it.”

              “Shagging,” he muttered, in a poor imitation of my American accent. “Bloody hell, I’m in over my head.” His hands drifted up from my waist to cup my face, forehead resting against mine, breathing in a way that led me to believe he was really thinking about it, trying to calm down.

              “John?” I asked, mulling things over in my head, focusing on the feel of his calloused hands and the sound of his intentionally even breathing, “Earlier – did you say that you loved me?”

              John’s breath hitched, and I tried to ignore the resurgence of fear in my stomach, the little voice screaming in my head that I’d ruined it again. “Yeah.” His voice was quiet, so quiet I almost couldn’t hear him, but steady.

              I took a deep breath and felt him relax again. “And – John. Did you say you drove here instead of the millhouse, even though the millhouse was closer? Even though you were injured?”

              “Yeah.”

              “John, you fucking idiot.” I could feel him tense against me, even as he met my eyes. “You mean to tell me that for _two years_ – I was in love with you too!” The brightness of his smile almost made me forget my anger. “And you could have bled out on the way over here, and I’d never have known, we’d never have – you could have _died_ , you could have –”

Evidently, John had the irksome tendency to kiss me while I was in the process of working things out. “Motherfucker,” I gasped as we parted, John laughing breathlessly, trying to pepper kisses along my jawline but having trouble maneuvering around his smile.

He moved to pick me up, his hands sinking under my thighs, but dropped me half an inch off the ground, groaning into my neck. “Still sore?” I carded my fingers through his hair as he nodded into my shoulder. “Told you so.”

He pulled away just enough to look at me. “I’ve never seen someone so smug.”

I wrapped my arms back around his neck. “Can you blame me? I just got everything I wanted.” He scoffed but couldn’t entirely hide his grin. “C’mon, John, I’ve still got a potion that will fix you.”

              Back at the table I sat him down in a chair, turned him around to spread the salve across his back, watching with satisfaction as his bruises cleared up. “Better?”

              He gave a satisfied ‘mmpf’ as I walked around to his front, working the salve up over his shoulder and down his chest, over his ribcage, towards the hem of the sweatpants I’d loaned him. Focused on supervising the magic – watching it seep into his muscles, watching the bruises blur away – I didn’t notice his breathing hitch until his fingers circled my wrists. “Okay, Andi – m’not sore anymore.”


End file.
